Advances in microprocessor technologies have made computing ubiquitous. Advances in networking and telecommunication technologies have also made computing increasingly networked. Today, huge volumes of content and services are available through interconnected public and/or private networks. Ironically, the ubiquitous availability of computing has also led to abuses, such as denial of service attacks, viruses, spam, and phishing. For various on-line applications, it is increasingly desirable to uniquely identify a computing device (hereinafter, simply device).
Prior art methods of identifying devices have included the usage of device serial numbers, media access control (MAC) addresses and so forth.